AMD Fusion: How It Started, Where It’s Going, And What It Means

You've already read about APUs, and maybe you're even using them now. But the road to creating APUs was paved with a number of struggles and unsung breakthroughs. This is the story of how hybrid chips came to be at AMD and where they’re going.

“Nothing is more difficult than the art of maneuver. What is difficult about maneuver is to make the devious route the most direct and to turn misfortune to advantage.”

—Sun Tzu, The Art of War

When I interviewed Dave Orton, then the president of ATI Technologies, in 2002, one of the first things he told me, "It’s always what’s possible in the business that keeps people going." No more prophetic words could describe the coming merger between his company and CPU manufacturer AMD. The big question, of course, isn’t what is possible or even whether the possible will become reality. The real question is whether the possible will become reality soon enough.